Checkmate
by Neko-chan -Silvered Tongue
Summary: Sebastian can see Ciel slipping. Sebastian can see Ciel losing the game. focus of anime episodes 19-22


_**Checkmate  
**By:_ Neko-chan

_Series:_ Kuroshitsuji (slight Sebastian/Ciel if you squint)

_Rating:_ PG-13

_Disclaimer:_ Don't own, don't claim to, not making any money off of it. Let's just let bygones be bygones, shall we~?

_Summary:_ [focus: episodes 19-22] Sebastian can see Ciel slipping. Sebastian can see Ciel losing the game.

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**Checkmate**

Sebastian can see Ciel slipping.

He sees the conscience that he had denied for so long once more returning to the boy, and the demon watches because that is what he knows what best to do when not implementing orders. He watches and he sees because that is what he does best. He watches and waits, seeing the strings that are being pulled while Ciel, the young master, continues to dance to the tune of another's song.

He sees. And he knows.

He knows that the game is coming to pieces: pawns manipulating the young boy in turn, pieces he never thought to be a threat coming 'round to hold razor-sharp blades to his throat. One by one, Ciel's pieces are slowly being whiddled down. It won't be long before his staunchest supporters, the servants, fall. The boy is losing the game and yet he is only distantly aware of it, so consumed by his guilt of the piece that rebelled and died trying to save the young master.

Sebastian finds it odd--perhaps ironic--to see the conscience that Ciel had buried for so long finally begin to rise to the surface of his claimed soul. This, the boy who was so concerned for the Parisian citizenry that he ordered a retreat instead of the end that _should_ have come. Concerned for others, hiding it poorly--this is the boy who once ordered the demon to kill his tormentors.

And then walked over the bodies of the dead.

He knows that Ciel has been checkmated, the trap so neatly placed: tradition will be the noose, the family laws that have been so strongly imprinted upon the boy that there is little hope that they will ever be broken. "Kill Ash," the young master had ordered. "Kill the Queen," he had continued.

But when that hesitation comes, when that flaw of conscience finally emerges to the light, though fractured itself into something mostly warped--it is then that Sebastian knows that the game is no longer salvageable. Aberlin had destroyed it the moment he sacrificed himself for Ciel's sake.

The game is done, and so Sebastian leaves.

...he watches, though, disguised and from the shadows to see what the boy does.

It is pathetic.

They boy does not understand how to function without him--so much promise and intelligence, easily tricked, ignored and dismissed, left alone to sleep in an alleyway. Sebastian has known for a while just how much Ciel depends on him; it is this, however, that shows him the extent of that dependency.

Ciel has faltered.

"Good night and good dreams."

A farewell of sorts that the boy realizes too late.

A farewell, mostly, to the game that that same boy lost control of. There is, perhaps, some chance in the boy winning that game: but the conscience would have to be lost, and he would need to once more delve into the ruthlessness that he has been missing for quite some time. It was there in the beginning, but rage fueled it into one bright, momentary supernova. Time has sharpened that rage, turned it cold and flavored it with obsession--it is that obsession that blinds the boy where he should _not_ be blinded. He is an adult in a child's body and the cynicism and pain that awakens each and every time his white shirt slips from his shoulders, mark bared and shame once again put to light on a daily basis...

These are the things that should have kept that ruthlessness, that rage close.

It is sad to see that Time does not heal all wounds--but it does dull them.

And those senses, so dulled from lack of use and a guilt that causes him to bring support to the fiancee of the dead Aberlin...

He _was_ losing the game and _has_ lost it _now_.

Sebastian watches the boy sleep with a cat's passively enigmatic gaze, and he wonders if, now that the game has ended, if Ciel will bow his head and allow himself to be checkmated--or if the boy will rise from the ashes of his once-more destroyed life like a black phoenix to finally finish what it was that he had originally set out to do.

And thus, the demon watches his master, once-master, still-master, watches and waits to see what will happen, leaning against a wall and hidden in the shadows, a black King chess piece tucked safely in his pocket.

~Owari~  
::Fin::


End file.
